Traces of ‘Microbial Cities’ a Record 3.49 Billion Years Old Discovered –“Communicating Via Chemical Signals”

Traces of ‘Microbial Cities’ a Record 3.49 Billion Years Old Discovered –“Communicating Via Chemical Signals”

Scientists analyzing some of the planet's oldest rocks, located in Western Australia's Pilbara region, have discovered traces of bacteria that thrived a record-breaking 3.49 billion years ago, only one billion years after Earth formed.. These textures on the surfaces of sandstone thought to be sculpted by once-living organisms that lived in the equivalent of microbial cities. The sandstone hosted thousands of kinds of bacteria, each specialized for a different task and communicating with the others via chemical signals.

These are "our oldest ancestors," said Nora Noffke, a biogeochemist at Old Dominion University, who was part of the group that made the discovery. Similar traces are found today along parts of Tunisia's coast, created by thick mats of bacteria that trap and glue together sand particles. The ancient and pristine Pilbara landscape was once shoreline during the Archean eon, which ended 2.5 billion years ago.

Many of the textures seen in the Australian rocks had already shown up in 2.9 billion-year-old rocks from South Africa, found by Noffke and colleagues in 2007. "But these are the best-preserved sedimentary rocks we know of, the ones most likely to preserve the really tiny structures and chemicals that provide evidence for life," says said Maud Walsh, a biogeologist atLouisiana State University.

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They will use one of two basic methods, both absurd. #1. Reliance on the scientific method is merely another form of ‘faith’, which should be considered equal to religious faith. #2. When creating the Universe 6000-odd years ago, the creator, for reasons unknown, cunningly added features that would make everything appear as though they were billions of years old, including the light en route from faraway stars.

Perhaps now we can assign a difficulty to each stage of evolution based on how long it took.
I think we will find that developing language happened in the twinkling of an eye relatively.
It seems like a big deal, but compared with other stages it was easy.
So our intelligence is much less of deal than we imagine. We must have pulled it off with a handful of cheap tricks to do it so quickly.
This would suggest that AI is simpler than we imagine.

Any takers to draw the table?

I would have thought that getting to a single cell was about 99% of the work, but is not so.